It might help if the text was a little clearer about the relationships between the various organisations involved. Here's a brief history:

In July 2001, Perl Monks (and Perl Mongers) announced that they were merging with Yet Another Society (the people that organise the YAPC conferences). In December 2001, YAS announced that they were setting up an internal unit called The Perl Foundation to handle all of their Perl work (YAS also works with other Open Source technologies). Perl Monks and Perl Mongers both became part of The Perl Foundation.

Therefore Perl Monks no longer really exists as a separate entity - which is why the the offering plate takes you to a YAS web site. For information about what TPF is doing with your money, see the newletters on their site.

I'd be happy to answer any further questions about the relationships between the various bodies.

Everytime I hear "offering plate" I get the thought that maybe perlmonks should have a "script-for-fee-service". I'm not sure about
how you could implement it, but the knowledgable monks around
here, seem to be able to whip up complex scripts during a coffee
break. There are always people looking for this or that task to be
done by a well-thought-out script, why not offer something like:
"Custom scripts: $.20 per line, sockets extra :-) "
I don't want to suggest that the perlmonks start competing with the
free lancers, but there may be a niche for those 100 line scripts,
that some IT department needs in a hurry, and their perl-person
would need 3 days to do what the monks here do in a blink of
an eye.

The only problem with a "script-for-fee" idea, is that Perlmonks has grown from infancy by being an open house of ideas that people are free to take from and input. Most of the monks (myself included), try to give back ideas as a gester of thanks for the knowledge they've gained here.

If we really wanted to pay for code/ideas/suggestions/etc., then we could subscribe to another pay service. However, since Perl is an open source programming language, it seems fitting that getting support for the base (and also advanced) topics should be somewhat close to free. You could always hire merlyn to do a code review for you. He's damn good at it. You can hire Dave Roth to write you a custom Win32 module (he's damn good at it too!) as well. There are many "script-for-fee" places out there. You just need to go and find them.

I don't think that any sort of "pay-for-service" idea will do any good for the monestary. With that said, I know next paycheck, I'll be donating $100 or so just to say thanks. Just do the same and the Monestary will be alright.

Yeah, it would be hard to give out free advice on the "newest nodes"
page , then turn around and ask for money on another page. But I
think it could work, for companies who wanted to support Perlmonks,
but needed something "real for their money"(i.e. for the accounting dept.), instead of making a
donation. Imagine a "collaborative projects page" which has all the
"script requests" on it. Then all the monks could hash out the problem
online, like they do with the newest nodes. They usually come up with
the "best solution", and then some other monks could volunteer to
write the docs, which would then be reviewed by all in a similar manner.

I remember back when the web was taking off, there was a REAL
monastery somewhere out west, that made their money by writing
html. They even were featured on a national news broadcast. My dream now, is to build a "retirement home" for down and out old
programmers. It would give old nerds someplace to go and be amoung fellow geek-retirees, who would then raise cash by implementing the above script writing plan.

How old is your current server? (model year) and what model year is the new one your looking at. Maybe give me some specs on it so I know your getting a good server and a $556 donation would be no problem.